


Let My Soul Be Still

by Lecavayay



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: 5+1 Things, Alternate Universe - Gods & Goddesses, M/M, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-08
Updated: 2019-10-08
Packaged: 2020-11-10 19:09:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20856797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lecavayay/pseuds/Lecavayay
Summary: 5 times Slater chased his lover across heaven and earth and 1 time his lover stopped running.





	Let My Soul Be Still

**Author's Note:**

  * For [NutsForBolts](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NutsForBolts/gifts).

> It's amazing how one song can create a whole story. This is inspired by Let You Love Me by Blake McGrath.
> 
> Let it be known that I am not a historian, so please excuse the vague timeframes presented. I hope you enjoy it, nonetheless!

There’s an idea on earth that for each soul formed in the stars there is another that was made just the opposite. Perfectly complimentary. A mate.

A lot of stock is put in these stars. Calculations and coordinates, pictures in the sky. Humans are silly like that.

Eros watches them from his perch in the sky, nudges a few celestial bodies left or right to make something pretty. Something they can look up to and smile at. He is a god after all.

They’re wrong, though. The stars have nothing to do with soulmates.

That’s all him.

And you would think, being the god of all things romantic, that his love life is booming. Blossoming like the brightest flowers in spring. Eternal flames carried by all of his suitors lining up for his affections.

You would be wrong.

Eros only has eyes for one.

The man is the son of a lesser god and is too beautiful and fair for him. He once smiled in his general direction while lounging naked in the garden and took his breath away. His laugh makes Eros feel faint with lust.

It makes him think maybe the humans had the right idea. Maybe soulmates are destined from the stars.

But a century of this love is almost too sweet, nearly too perfect.

And Eros, despite being an almighty god, is also a man. And men are well known for doing very stupid things.

1.

He gets bored.

Not of his lover but of his _job. _A few hundred years of romantic supervision and shooting arrows will do that to a person. Well, a _god_.

The point is, he has one too many ambrosias one night and decides to descend to earth in his finest robe and sandals, take a new name, and make a home for himself. Nothing rich or flamboyant, just something to keep the rain and cold out when winter comes.

A long overdue vacation, he tells himself.

He’ll go home in a few months.

But by next spring, Braydon has quite a bit of land to himself and buys five sheep from the market to watch over. He plants wheat, cucumbers, and grapes to tend to. There’s an olive tree nearby that’s perfect to lay under when the sun is out.

He falls asleep there most afternoons and some days, when he’s under his olive tree, he forgets he’s a god at all.

Today, he wakes to laughter and a face full of leaves. Blinking his eyes open, he’s faced with a halo of curls backlit by the sun.

“It’s going to rain.” The man’s smile is youthful, tilting up to the left more than the right.

“Excuse me?”

“Clouds are mounting in the west. If you stay out here any longer, you’re going to get wet.”

The man offers him a hand up and that simple brush of skin sends a shock of familiarity along his spine. “Do I know you?”

He laughs, takes his hand back. “Just a neighbor.”

Braydon watches the man turn and walk through his wheat, down the hill toward the town.

He doesn’t make it home before the rain comes.

2.

The gods eventually go out of fashion with the fall of the empire and Braydon doesn’t find that he minds.

He packs up his gold and leaves his little house behind. He finds good men to help build him a castle in the mountains of Europe. Something more the style of this century.

He discovers that these people love the stars, too. They find more meaning in them than Braydon could ever imagine. So he spends some nights making new pictures for them to tell stories about. Helps build a device to see them closer, magnify their brightness.

He misses his fields and his sheep. The markets in town are as close as he can get to fresh produce and honestly, it’s a stretch. He usually goes down early in the morning when the air is still chilly. There’s a man selling fish today and he pays for the largest one.

Another spring is coming and he finds himself drawn to a cart covered in flowers. The pink ones smell lovely and he splurges on a little bundle of them.

A hand reaches from behind him and plucks a stem.

“Hey!”

The man has a lopsided smile that he buries in the flower. His eyes sparkle with a challenge. “It’s a beautiful day, isn’t it?”

“I could have your hand for that.”

“Is that a marriage proposal?” He has the audacity to wiggle his eyebrows and tuck the flower behind his ear.

Something about the man reminds Braydon of olive trees but he’s gone too quickly, disappearing into the market crowd.

3.

Braydon doesn’t understand how the world got so grey.

A fellow soldier settles next to him and lights a cigarette, the cherry red end of it the only color in sight. He offers it to Braydon after a few deep drags.

Braydon has found he prefers whiskey. “Maybe next time.”

The soldier digs the toe of his boot in the mud. “Y’think we’re getting out of here anytime soon?”

Braydon looks to the heavens, dark clouds covering the stars. “Eventually.”

“Don’t sound so optimistic, mate.”

“Sorry.”

He flicks his cigarette into the mud, stomps on it. “I could probably cheer you up,” he says, casual.

Braydon can almost taste the implication of his proposition, thinks about how nice it might be to feel warm for a night. It’s been a long time. “Oh?”

The crinkle of his eyes when he smiles is comforting. “Gonna make me spell it out?”

Braydon stands and offers a hand, leads him to one of the tents on the edge of camp. His mouth tastes like ash when they kiss and he slips his lips down along his jaw and behind his ear where he tastes like dirt and death instead.

The cot isn’t big enough for the both of them and Braydon finds himself on his knees. His companion throws his head back and Braydon can almost make a picture out of the freckles on his chest.

He thinks he might move a few stars, name them after the man.

All’s fair in love and war. 

4.

He lets his hair grow out, brushes the curls so they get frizzy. He wears bellbottoms and brightly colored silk shirts. He’s tall enough already but the boots he likes make him taller.

He’s not a perfect picture of an astrophysics professor, but where’s the fun in being ordinary.

Braydon likes the little tinted glasses that come into style and picks up a pair of blue and pink ones on a whim. He wears them out on the quad when he eats lunch. Today, there’s a group of students playing with a frisbee to watch.

A graduate student with shaggy blond curls settles to his left and opens the brown paper sack he packed at Braydon’s house that morning. “I brought you an extra pudding,” he says, offering the chocolate cup.

“You know me too well,” Braydon replies with a sly grin.

It was easy to find someone to care about this time around. The earth was rather full of love at the moment. It reminded Braydon of his first home, of the garden and his arrows.

He thinks he might truly be happier here, amongst it all. Instead of just watching.

5.

Braydon flips the month of his calendar and can’t believe nearly another millennium has passed. It feels like time is speeding up. Like the earth is spinning faster, circling the sun more rapidly.

In this modern age, he finds a job as a computer technician. He’s going to be sharing a cubical with a new computer science graduate. The guy beats him in this morning and from behind, his hair and his shoulders and the length of his neck startles Braydon. Flashes of memory, of tasting his skin and running fingers through curls, the shape of his mouth when he cried out in ecst—

“It’s nice to meet you, I’m Slater.”

Braydon shakes his hand. “The pleasure’s all mine.”

He gravitates toward Slater in the office, the break room, the elevator down to their cars. He allows himself casual touches, stolen smiles. He thinks maybe Slater knows how he feels and that’s fine, he can wait.

“I can’t believe they’re making us work New Year’s Eve,” Slater complains.

“You don’t think Y2K is going to mess everything up?”

Slater scoffs. “We already have the solutions in place. They don’t need _all_ of us here.”

Braydon leans back in his chair. “Did you have some big plans? Someone to kiss?”

“Maybe.”

“Too bad.”

Their boss supplies champagne and finger foods all set up in the break room. They wheel a television onto the main floor so everyone can watch the countdown for the ball to drop. Braydon doesn’t understand the spectacle, but he joins in when they all start counting aloud with ten seconds left.

Someone has a noisemaker and there’s shouts of welcoming the year 2000.

Braydon’s attention is somewhere else entirely.

Slater grabs him by the back of the neck and pulls him down into a searing kiss. He tastes like ten thousand lifetimes of love and Braydon licks into his mouth to taste more.

“Happy New Year,” Slater says against his lips.

+1

Braydon buys a penthouse on the top of the tallest building in New York. He’s an executive for a technology company now, he has the means.

It’s a big open space and he fills it with simple furniture, sleek appliances, dark hardwood floors. He feels a bit vain to put so much money into a roof over his head but, well. It’s not just for him.

“I have to say, I think I liked your castle better.”

“My what?”

Slater smiles where he’s wrapped up in the sheets of Braydon’s bed. “D’you think we’re soulmates? Written in the stars?”

“Soulmates aren’t real,” Braydon replies, brushing a curl out of Slater’s face.

“Of course they are.”

He cocks his head. “How are you so sure?”

Slater smiles and gets his lips right up next to Braydon’s ear. “Because I’m yours.”

“What?”

“C’mon, Eros. You’re smart enough to figure it out.”

The floor drops out of his stomach. “How do you know that name?”

“I was there when you the gods made you, sweetheart. I’ve followed you across heaven and earth, been by your side since the very start.”

Braydon holds Slater’s face, searches his eyes for something he thought he’d left behind when he came to earth. Something he didn't think he deserved anymore. “How?”

Slater kisses him, the warmest press of lips. “We’re immortal, darlin’. I was never going to let you go.”

“It’s been you, every time.”

He traces the lines of Braydon’s face with a fingertip, around his eyes and down his nose, to the pout of his lips. “Can we stop running now?”

“I was never running. I was just…bored.”

“Okay.” Slater’s hand finds a place over Braydon’s heart. “Then just be still. Let me love you.”

Braydon lets Slater roll him onto his back, lets him straddle his hips, drag his hands down his chest. He lets him press his lips to the curve of his shoulder and ribs, the jut of his hip, the meat of his thigh.

He gets his fingers all twisted up in Slater’s hair when he takes Braydon into his mouth. “I’m so sorry I ever thought I needed anything other than you.”

“Yeah but,” Slater says, crawling back up Braydon’s body. “What an absolutely amazing love story we have to tell, now. Eros and Psyche. Across all of time.”

“One of legend.”


End file.
